Xbox 360 Games Outsell Wii U Titles By 24 Times In 2013 So Far

Xbox games outsold Nintendo's Wii U titles by 24 times in the UK in the first half of 2013, according to new figures.

According to Gamasutra, more than 4.3 million Xbox games were sold in the first six months of the year - not including digital sales.

Xbox titles outsold PS3 games (3.2 million) and PC titles (1.3 million) and trampled the Wii U which sold just 179,000 games.

The Wii U was also soundly beaten by Nintendo's other consoles. The 3DS sold 799k games in the period, with most of those coming in the two most recent months after well-received games including Luigi's Mansion 2, Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

The original Wii also managed to sell 649k games - about four times as many as the Wii U - helped, no doubt, by the fact many retail stores including Currys PC World continue to promote the older console over the new dual-screen device.

The original Nintendo DS also continued to sell games, with 600k titles shifted from January to June.

Nintendo has a strong line-up of Wii U games coming in the next six months, with new Pikmin, Mario, Zelda and Sonic The Hedgehog games all impressing us at a recent demo.

But with just 24,000 game sales in June 2013, the company will be starting virtually from scratch - while third-party publishers continue to abandon the system.

Meanwhile Sony picked up enough momentum from the exclusive launch of The Last of Us to overtake the Xbox 360's software sales in June - for the first time this year. Its haul of 637k units in June was not enough to overtake Microsoft's 2013 record of 1.09million for March, but with the launch of two new consoles on the market it should give both companies confidence that their existing machines will remain cash cows for months, if not years to come.